


a tree on a hill in iowa

by hiroshimalovers



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:01:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28842039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiroshimalovers/pseuds/hiroshimalovers
Summary: This is a story about a tree (and a hunter, an angel, a ghost, and the wind).
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	a tree on a hill in iowa

**Author's Note:**

> I had great fun writing this! I really love reading books about nature, I'm sort of re-watching Supernatural, and I spend a lot of time looking at the Black Walnut tree outside my window, so this is the result of that. This is perhaps one of the funkier fics I've written in the past year, but I had a great afternoon writing it and I hope you enjoy reading!

This is a story about a tree.

\--

Dean remembers planting a tree. The soil was damp under his fingers. It crumbled as he grabbed a fistful of dirt from the bucket the teacher had set between him and another student. It had gotten under his fingernails. Dean was nine, he thinks. He knew the feeling of dirt; he had sat on damp ground as he watched his dad dig in empty graveyards and said gruffly, “This’ll be your job someday soon, Dean.”

He patted the soil flat around the sapling and the teacher, her face and clothes a blur long lost to time, had said, “This tree will stand here in a hundred years. You can bring your kids to see it.”

“Can I bring Sammy?” Dean said, because even then, any future he could see for himself had to do with hunting and Dad and Sammy.

He doesn’t remember what the teacher said in response, but he remembers sitting in the hard desk chair for the rest of the day and picking the dirt out from underneath his fingernails. This tree doesn’t matter to us. Nor does this memory. Dean has revisited the memory, a few times, long enough so that it’s not entirely locked in the tombs of childhood memory, but it’s not part of the story, not really.

\--

Our tree is strong by the time she meets Dean. She grew tall from a seed on a hill in the middle of Iowa. After they came on their horses, white men eventually wore a trail near the base of her roots, now only frequented by the occasional hiker and the White-Tailed Deer and rabbits. She finds herself as a home to Chickadees and White-breasted Nuthatches and Downy Woodpeckers in winter, and to Robins and Song Sparrows and goldfinches in summer.

Our tree does not know about Dean Winchester yet and she would not care about him if she did.

Our tree, like many trees, knows of angels. Trees, especially the American Black Walnut, know more than anyone gives them credit for. Water seeps through their roots, water that is older than any man who may pause to lean against them for a drink of water, older than any songbird that may spend a season singing in their leaves. Water may not have a personality of its own, or if it does, it is so slow moving that only the rocks themselves know of it, but our tree learns from it all the same. And water tells of angels.

Our tree does not care about angels. In the grand scheme of things, she is young, but in the land in which she has always lived, she is past middle age. From her perch on a hill, she has watched railways bustle and grow quiet, watched horses go by and then noisy vehicles. She has watched the world changed, tasted the water as it is polluted further and further, and she has never met anything outside the children who play in her woods and the birds who flit through her canopy. She knows about angels, but she has never seen any reason to care. 

\--

Castiel remembers the first trees. He does not remember much, from those times, his assignments taking him elsewhere, but he remembers those early trees. It was long before man, and long after most angels had stopped being wowed by the way of things on earth, perfectly happy to play their games up in the heavens, to make their own games and their own creatures who were destined to die out on planets less favored than Earth.

Castiel has always liked Earth, the way that it’s been as much of a laboratory as an exhibition. He liked his assignments in those days, whispering thoughts into the minds of early rodents, taking in the essence of the ocean curving itself around the planet.

He remembers running his hands – or what he would now describe as hands, as he had no word for it in those days - across the bark of the first true tree. He was strong, then, and he could feel the rings of the tree, and the way she was desperate to find light, so desperate that she began to form branches, stretching out further for that sweet, sweet sunlight. Castiel likes to think that he never used to be able to feel, but he remembers being impressed, in whatever way an angel could, that she would break from millions of years of tradition just to touch the light.

When he touched down on earth the next time, that tree was long gone but there were many more in her place. They made him itch, the spores they shed, and they were taller and thicker than that first memory. He remembers the way that first tree felt as she stretched, as she rebelled, and he feels himself sneeze with his entire self. Even then, he could find no fault in the forms the trees had made themselves to be.

\--

Our tree knows what it’s like to be haunted, or at least she thinks she does. Flies land on her and if she can manage to bring herself to listen, they always have thoughts and gossip about the world around them, the bees and the houses and the rows and rows and rows of corn that spread out from the base of her hill. She hardly ever meets them more than once. She is not young and time is faster for her than the creatures she shares her canopy with, the birds that come back seasons in a row and then disappear, the spiders that spend months crafting elaborate webs, the squirrels that dart up and down her trunk.

There was a girl, once, the only girl to find her way up our trees tall, strong trunk to reach the branches far above the ground. She came, summer after summer, and our tree can still feel her weight in the v between two of her branches if the evening light slants in just the right way. Our tree loves the chattering of the squirrels and the chirping of the birds and she mourns when men with guns come into her woods and shoot them one by one, carrying them out in burlap sacks. More animals, the cousins and grandchildren of those who once rested in her branches, find their way back, and they skitter across her branches, but none more choose her for a nest.

Our tree knows about haunting because one summer the girl presses her necklace into the bark at her base. She thinks nothing of it at the time, for she is a tree, and to pay attention to every deer that scratches itself against her trunk and every gust of wind through her branches is against her very nature. But she feels it later, as her bark closes around it, and although the weight of the girl is gone from her branches, she can still hear her.

It does not worry our tree at first. She does not mind an extra citizen taking refuge in her branches, and the girl has always had stories to tell, though they are oft repeated. She has heard about this sort of thing before, and from the record of the water that seeps into her system, she knows the town is mourning, mourning in a cycle, and it is not hard to know it is the girl.

She is rooted, and cannot travel, our tree, and her ghosts are tethered to the woods, and they hear from the deer and the rabbits about what is happening in the farmland nearby. Nothing changes for a long time, the girl coming and going quietly in her branches, and our tree does not think much of it. Trees are not so attuned to human nature, after all, not even those with ghosts among their branches.

\--

Dean has chopped down a tree before. Splinters wiggled their way into the palm of his hands from the rough handle of the ax. He was a teenager, that time, sent out to the back to chop firewood while his dad and a friend talked business. Sammy had been sitting on the back porch cross-legged, his nose tucked into a book.

His shoulders ached as he brought the ax down, and Sammy had told him to be quieter and Dean had grumbled at him. He has a dream about this moment, sometimes, of Sammy telling him, “I’m reading,” and the wind ruffling through Dean’s hair, and Dean thinking, I would do anything for you, and then usually he turns around and he’s in hell. It’s a hell of a way to spoil what once had been, if not a good memory, a passable one.

He looks at his hands and he remember he used to have a scar from accidentally slicing open his own palm from that day. He wonders if Castiel saw that memory briefly, and he puts it out of his mind. Dean knows that Castiel knows him, every molecule, but can barely fathom it. This memory itself is unremarkable, but Dean and Castiel – we will remember them.

\--

Our tree meets Dean Winchester on a Sunday afternoon, though she does not know the days of the weeks nor the name of the man. For her, it’s just another season of cold, and he is a man who has scared off a chatty White Breasted Nuthatch that had been darting up her trunk. She has seen men like him before, in layers with short-shorn hair, and a gun slung over their shoulder, but she can tell he is not from here (and not just from the roar of his cars engine, a roar she hadn’t heard in years).

“It’s around here somewhere,” he says.

She does not know what he is talking about. Our tree does not know her neighbors well, and her canopy is one of the tallest in the forest. She has been here longer than almost anyone, now. She has met a thousand chickadees and a million ants have marched across her roots. Even the seasons do not come as they used to, and the girl who has taken up residence in a crook of her branches only comes angry.

Our tree is angry too, as trees do not like pollution in their water and in their air, but she does not reek of rage like her ghost does. All she can do is provide for the birds that nest in her crown, provide a home for the creatures that make their way across her branches, and so she does. Her ghost used to like to watch the birds and tried to coax cardinals and bluejays closer to her invisible form, but now the moments that she visits are seeped in revenge. Our tree understands, but she does not speak the same language as the girl, does not know how to tell her that sometimes, it all must come to an end.

The man named Dean Winchester has been running a flashlight through the underbrush. Our tree does not know what he is looking for nor why is here, but she is interested. She doesn’t get a lot of midnight visitors and her ghost has been angry lately because her branch is beginning to rot, as is the way of things.

A breeze rustles through her leaves and the man squats down at where her roots meet her trunk. His hand is rough against her bark as he runs over the spot where a necklace has grown into her bark, years and years before. The man grunts and stands up and she watches him go.

\--

Somewhere, sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala, Castiel says, “There will be trees in our heaven.”

Dean looks at him and then back at the road. He says, “Okay.”

\--

Our tree feels an angel. I know we said that our tree does not care about angels but she also has never been in the presence of one. This angel, he is confined by his vessel, and he has been cast out of the official ranks of heaven, but our tree does not know this. She hears the rumble of the car and she feels the essence of an angel.

The man named Dean Winchester is speaking as he approaches with the angel. His voice is gruff and he’s saying, “Right over here,” and then the two of them crouch at the base of her trunk. She wonders how no bird, no squirrel, no water molecule, has ever told her how an angel makes you believe that you are important, even if you are just a tree on a hill in Iowa.

“We’ll have to burn the tree,” the man named Dean Winchester says.

“Dean, no,” says the angel, and his voice carries the weights of histories that stretch back far longer than our tree.

“The ghost could come back at any moment,” Dean says. The ghost is the girl, our tree knows, and she thinks that maybe she’s always known.

The angel rolls his eyes in the darkness. “Where did you think the locket is?” he says to Dean, “Here?” He lays his hand flat against the trunk of our tree and she is struck by just how old he is. He feels conflicted. He feels good. She thinks that if water could speak, it would speak like he does.

“No,” Dean says, his voice gruff.

“Here?” the angel moves his hand. The tree knows that she could tell him where the necklace is. He could take it from her, if he wished. A trees thoughts are trivial to read for an angel, they are written on the veins of her leaves, in the grooves of her bark.

“Let me, Cas,” Dean says, and he lays his hand on top of the angels and moves it to where the locket has grown into her trunk.

The feeling of the angel does not change. Our tree knows that he must have done this on purpose, it must mean something to him, and it is the first time the tree thinks that angels are more than just the cold creators the water remembers. She did not expect an angel to feel so warm. Dean removes his hand from her trunk and she hardly notices.

The angel closes his eyes and our tree feels a voice in her heartwood. _“Will you give us the locket?”_

Every part of our tree wants to scream out, yes, yes, yes. But she is a tree and she cannot remove something from her wood any more than a man can grow wings. The feeling of the angel is overwhelming – Castiel – he imbues upon her, not Cas as the man – Dean – had called him, but not so overwhelming that she does not notice the familiar presence of her ghost, the girl.

The ghost sits on the branch she has sat on for nearly a hundred years now and it is a branch that is rotting. She is angry, angrier than our tree has ever seen her (but not angrier than she has ever been).

 _Why_ , our tree asks the angel.

 _"Because we need your help_ ," Castiel responds, " _This town has suffered."_ Her ghost screams and stands on the branch that has begun to die. The ghost pushes and our tree feels a pain unlike she has ever felt before, the loss of one of her oldest limbs, at the behest of someone she considered a companion.

“Cas,” Dean shouts, pulling him away from our tree as the branch cracks and tumbles to the ground. Our tree does not scream. Our tree is angry, perhaps, and she wonders who has been resting in her branches. “I think that’s a no. We can just light the damn tree up.”

“No,” Castiel says, “She thinks slowly. That wasn’t her,” and he lays his hand against her trunk once more.

He feels different, sharp with adrenaline. She always believed that angels did not feel but this angel is here, talking to her, talking to a man named Dean. _Take the necklace,_ our tree says, and the girl lets out another shriek that no one but she and our tree can hear.

“I thought you were my friend,” the girl yells, and our tree would shudder if she could.

The angel presses his hand to her bark and it burns. She is a tree, she is old, and she has seen highways and rail lines and cities rise and fall, but this is a day she will remember.

 _“I am your friend,”_ our tree rumbles, but the ghost of a girl does not speak the language of trees and does not hear.

Castiel hears, and he hands the locket to Dean, before pressing at her bark again. _I am weak,_ he says to her, _but I will do my best to heal you_. Those are the words he says but our tree knows a language far deeper than words, and hears what else he is saying, the words and feelings that are leaking out of him.

He is an angel that is older than life itself, and he is dying too, much like her. It makes our tree feel even more grateful towards him, towards the tiny piece of himself that he uses to heal her from the damage her ghost has done – is still doing, as she howls and tears through her barren branches. The hole in her bark knits itself closed, and she knows intimately, suddenly, the depths of how much angels can feel, and how much this angel feels for his companion.

Suddenly, it goes quiet. Our tree had not been paying attention to Dean Winchester, but only the angel. Or, as she knows from her moments with Castiel’s grace, she has only been borrowing Dean’s angel for a moment. The silence is great. Castiel removes his hand from her bark.

 _Thank you_ , our tree whispers to me, into the great dark sky. She feels settled. She is at peace and she is healed, and she has met an angel who is more of a man than the god she had always expected. Dean Winchester pulls his angel into a hug. For our tree, life goes on.

\--

I tell you this story not because I am a tree or an angel or anything in between. I am merely the wind and I hear the whispers of leaves and men alike. I hear the whispers that were never meant to reach a receiving ear. I tell you this story because that is what the wind does and has done long before the man called Dean Winchester and his angel Castiel walked this land and I will continue to listen to the leaves of trees, here on Earth, and up in heaven. And I will continue to speak, to whoever turns their ear to listen.

\--

Our tree will eventually die slowly, and she will finally let go of dying her roots in a hot summer storm, the wind whipping around her. As she moves on, she will think about what she has seen, the girl and the angel and the birds and the water, and she will let them all go.

She will grow again, in heaven, though she does not know that. She will feel wind blow through her canopy again and she will have a girl who scrambles up her trunk to settle into her branches to talk. She will meet the same man and the same angel, and she will learn that God is not a tree but a boy, and she will stretch down her roots, and she will be content.

But for now, she is still living on that hill. A girl ran up to her and cried out with delight to her mother that the tree was so big she couldn’t reach her arms around the trunk. Our tree lives on in Iowa, and our tree believes in angels. And so do I.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and let me know what you thought! You're also welcome to find me on tumblr @deansparkingviolations :))


End file.
